Dec 19, 2005

Things Noted Here and There

by Cliopatria

The Little Professor calls attention to The Guardian's fine obituary for the British classicist, Peter Brunt,"one of the last great English positivists."

Harvard University's Open Collections Program announces the opening of its first on-line collection,"Women Working, 1800-1930." It is a fully searchable collection of 500,000 pages and images, including 7,500 pages of manuscripts, 3,500 books and pamphlets, and 1,200 photographs.

At the Old is the New New, our colleague, Rob MacDougall, continues his two-part series of posts on 19th century spiritualism and technology. See:"Spirit Fingers" and"The Medium is the Message." These could be anticipations of Rob's second book. It is fascinating material!

Niall Ferguson,"The Possibility Now Facing Iraq Is Not a Democratic Peace, But a Democratic War," The Telegraph, 18 December, is a remarkably pessimistic reading of the road ahead. [You can expect it to show up in the LA Times today.]

More Comments:

Jonathan Dresner - 12/19/2005

Ferguson is at least realizing that not all empires are vigorous and productive.

I'm surprised that fewer people have referenced the post-Versailles Eastern European democracies in reference to our own democratizing "project."

Ralph E. Luker - 12/19/2005

Yes, I found the op-ed surprisingly pessimistic, as well. Ferguson has been urging a much larger American force in Iraq. Apparently, 400,000 troops are transformative; 200,000 leave a democratic war behind them.

Manan Ahmed - 12/19/2005

That Ferguson op-ed. Whatever happened to the transformative powers of a good empire?